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Darkness Falls

When a hard drive voices that dainty little "gronk" that we know
and dread, the first question most of us ask of users is, "Do you have a
backup?" Sometimes, miracle of miracles, the users say yes, and we
cheeruntil they begin working on their freshly restored system and find
out about all of the things that weren't backed up.

Is it their fault? No way. They're victims of Mr. Gates' habit of
tucking important Windows files into carefully hidden directories. The
rationale, I gather, is that if users can't get at the files, they
can't do damage. (And why would you need to get at the files, after all?
Windows will take care of you.) In deciding on this strategy, Microsoft missed
one critical point: Stuff happens. Bad stuff. Hard drives that go "tick,
tick, tick" and corrupt themselves. Power failures at inopportune moments
that cause heads to do rude things during a write. Hardware failures that make
charming coasters out of pieces of magnetic media. Disks that go bump in the
night.